I would like to “think” that someday the use of racial epithets of any kind will be completely nonexistent in the world, especially in America — the land of the free and the brave where our pledge of allegiance to our flag says we’re “one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

Other than to perpetuate hate and self-denigration, which exacerbates societal racial tension and divisiveness, what purpose does the use of racial epithets serve? I would say none.

While they may serve to emotionally ventilate the conscious and subconscious visceral attitudes of racist people, they certainly serve no positive and productive purpose.

Recently, the highly distasteful and disdainful n-word was used by comedian Larry Wilmore, host of “The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore” on Comedy Central, to supposedly fondly address U.S. President Barack Obama during the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) Dinner.

Wilmore served as the event’s host. After a rather awkward comedic monologue by Wilmore — he later told The Washington Post, “I know that I lost the room early” — Wilmore ended his speech with a salutation to President Obama, where he shockingly said, “So, Mr. President, if I’m going to keep it one hundred (meaning 100% real): Yo, Barry, you did it, my n----.”

Wilmore supposedly affectionately pronounced this dreadful epithet with an ending short vowel sound of “a” instead of “er” to somehow show a brotherly bond that he apparently thought the president would appreciate and understand.

In the Washington Post, April Ryan, a White House correspondent and Washington bureau chief for American Urban Radio Networks, said in an article she titled “Larry Wilmore’s n-word ‘joke’ Was an Insult to Black Journalists,” Wilmore’s direct reference to President Obama with this racial epithet “displayed his utter lack of respect, not only for the president, but for the journalists — particularly black journalists — in attendance. He should know better and we surely deserved better.”

Ryan is absolutely right!

According to the WHCA official website’s advertisement of the event in December of 2015, it said, “Larry’s edgy, even provocative, brand of humor means he’s certainly up to the task of skewering politicians of all ideological stripes, and we don’t expect the nation’s news media to escape unscathed either,” said Carol Lee, White House correspondent for The Wall Street Journal and president of the WHCA.

The WHCA was founded in 1914. Ironically, proceeds from the WHCA annual dinner that Wilmore hosted go toward scholarships and awards aimed at supporting aspiring journalists and recognizing excellence in the profession. Thus, during such an event of teachable moments for youth one would think the maxim of “always lead by example and not by exemption” would have been adhered.

There is never be an acceptable exemption to using this epithet.

If Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Sojourner Truth, Harriett Tubman, Thurgood Marshall, Rosa Parks or Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been there to see this travesty, they would have been hurt and embarrassed to see our lack of self-respect, respect for the president, and for them, not to mention the blurred lines between our shameless arrogance and ignorance.